Sources: Angela Powers, 785-532-6890, apowers@k-state.edu;
and Sam Mwangi, 785-532-3960, scmwangi@k-state.edu
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007
K-STATE'S A.Q. MILLER SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS WINS KNIGHT FOUNDATION GRANT
MANHATTAN -- Kansas State University students made a presentation at the Online Newspaper Association Conference in Toronto Oct. 18 on their prototype for increasing interest in community journalism.
The presentation was part of K-State's A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications' project for the 21st Century Knight News Challenge, a worldwide contest designed to find new ways to gather and distribute news. K-State was among the 25 proposals selected to receive a part of the $25 million in grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to help invent the future of journalism. Winning proposals ranged from blogs to the creation of new products.
The yearlong project at K-State was coached by Sam Mwangi, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications.
The K-State selected for the project team included:
Heather Hickerson senior in print and electronic journalism, Douglass; Tina Deines, graduate student in journalism and mass communications, Manhattan; Scott Douglass, senior in electronic journalism, Olathe; Matt Sundberg senior in radio-TV, Roeland Park; and Shane Howard junior in electronic journalism, Tonganoxie.
From out of state: Rebecca Perez senior in print journalism, Oregon City, Ore.
Angela Powers, director of the A.Q. Miller School, said the K-State students were chosen through a competitive process based on class contributions and dedication to community journalism.
"Their prototype allows readers to directly involve themselves in local politics and has received interest from companies such as AOL," Powers said.
The K-State project is part of a seven-college collaborative network that will use an incubator process to come up with innovative ideas for gathering and distributing news in specific geographic communities. The project, which received a $230,000 award from the Knight Foundation, was spearheaded by Dianne Lynch, dean of the H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College.
Besides K-State, the other schools in the project are University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Michigan State, University of Kansas, Western Kentucky University and St. Michael's College in Vermont.
"It's time to leverage the creative and intellectual capital of the next generation of journalists to spur innovation in our newsrooms and our communities," Lynch said.
Also selected for grants by the Knight Foundation included the Media Lab and comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MTV, VillageSoup in Maine, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
Alberto Ibarguen, president and chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation, said the worldwide contest is designed to create new ideas for journalism.
"We want to spur discovery of how digital platforms can be used to disseminate news and information on a timely basis within a defined geographic space, and thereby build and bind community," Ibarguen said.
That's what newspapers and local television stations used to do in the 20th century, and it's something that our communities still need today, he said.
More information about K-State's role in the incubator project is available by contacting Powers at apowers@k-state.edu or Mwangi at scmwangi@k-state.edu.