I, Reporter

New Batch of Knight News Challenge Winners

It seems like not too ago that I,Reporter was one of the golden boys of the  Knight News Challenge contest, with our Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project among 25 recipients of the first year's awards. But now the new batch of prize winners is out and they're going to get a much-deserved spotlight -- and not just because the legendary Tim Berners-Lee is among them!

Here's a full list of the projects, which include a really impressive array of efforts, including a bunch from outside the United States to use the Internet to spread news and information -- in particular by using mobile phone technology.

Of course the Berners-Lee project will get big buzz; from what his partner Martin Moore of Media Standards Trust told me over lunch, it's focused on creating transparency for news content on the web.

But equally interesting to me, journalistically, is a great project by Dave Cohn, a former Columbia J-School student I've worked with, in which he will try to marry freelance investigative reporters with the small donors who want to support their work financially. I saw him here in Las Vegas at the Interactive Media conference where the awards were announced, and after talking with him about it more, really believe Knight is on the right track supporting smart young journalist/new media thinkers like him and many of the others. Best of luck to all of them!

Planning for User Content

In recent months, some colleagues and I outside I,Reporter have heard more and more from clients: How do I manage the content on my site, especially if I want to incorporate web 2.0 technologies? Careful planning is definitely in order, especially if you're expecting to make the most of user-generated content. You don't want to build an expensive web site, only to discover that you can't even easily allow for user comments.

So another partner and I, former ABCNews.com colleague Dorian Benkoil of Teeming Media, have put together a document that we hope provides some of those answers. "Choosing the Right Content Management System for Your Web Site(s)" is our comprehensive  67-page analysis of content management systems, products and solutions, as well as best practices and common pitfalls. The report was written together with digital media consultant Amy Webb of WebbMedia Group. You can click here to download an excerpt.