Defining who the Knight News Challenge is for

By Joshua Benton /  Nov. 2, 2008  /  10:54 p.m.  

NYU’s Jay Rosen doesn’t seem too thrilled by the ProPublica/NYT application for the Knight News Challenge — at least based on his Twittering tonight:

Rosen’s point seems to be that $1 million going to big dogs like the Times would mean $1 million less for the small, scrappy startup ideas that the News Challenge is probably better known for. (Although, to be sure, healthy slices of News Challenge money have gone to big dogs like MIT in the past.)

In the end, of course, it’ll be up to the Knight folks to determine how to divvy up their funds. And that process is months away. But if I were an aspiring media entrepreneur deeply invested in the crazy idea I just submitted to the News Challenge, I could imagine being chuffed that I was competing with the nation’s top newspaper.

This entry was written by Joshua Benton, posted on November 2, 2008 at 10:54 pm, and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.


12 comments:

  1. eric umansky at 11:20 pm, November 2, 2008

    Chuffed as in happy?

     
  2. Joshua Benton at 11:25 pm, November 2, 2008

    The “annoyed, displeased, disgruntled” definition, not the “delighted, pleased, satisfied” one. Okay, so I’m not British. Cut me some slack!

     
  3. Amanda at 2:42 pm, November 4, 2008

    Sure I’m chuffed to have to compete with the Times (and MTV, which won a grant in 2007), even as a local partner on Document Cloud.

    However, the Times Foundation doesn’t fund the Times. So yeah, ProPublica and the Times can’t go to it for money.

    I’d be a lot more chuffed to have to compete with the Times for Times Foundation grant money than for Knight money.

    For another thing, a significant point of the application is to make the product of ongoing Times R & D investment available beyond their fine Renzo Piano designed walls.

    PS. You can see Gotham Gazette’s proposals here.

     
  4. Anna Haynes at 10:45 am, November 11, 2008

    My prediction: to the extent that NYTimes culture shapes the outcome, the ‘product’ will be information delivered to the readers; it’s not going to leverage the readers’ expertise and interest into building something greater.

     
  5. JTownend at 11:28 am, November 12, 2008

    ha - that confused me at first: there was only one definition of ‘chuffed’ as far as I knew! (I’m sure us British were first with ours)

     
  6. karhec at 5:53 pm, June 19, 2009

    Interesting to see them win in the end - knight likes the big dogs - http://tinyurl.com/kvzsds gives the reviewers comments

     

Trackbacks:

  1. ProPublica and NYT seek $1M to put everyone’s documents online » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism at 9:58 am, November 3, 2008

    [...] [Update: See Jay Rosen's concerns on this application here.] [...]

     
  2.   Interesting links by andydickinson.net at 11:18 am, November 6, 2008

    [...] Defining who the Knight News Challenge is for » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of J… [...]

     
  3. UK-US dictionary needed for the blogosphere! | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog at 11:03 am, November 14, 2008

    [...] thrown off track with a US use of ‘chuffed’ in its negative sense… and what does DigiDave mean by ‘bullish’? He says he’s feeling bullish [...]

     
  4. DocumentCloud: The innovation $1m in Knight money could buy » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism at 8:42 am, November 19, 2008

    [...] Knight News Challenge application by ProPublica and The New York Times that generated some buzz and criticism earlier this month. They’re seeking a $1 million grant to develop an online repository of [...]

     
  5. Resources for documentary research, or what the Old Pros can teach New Media « UMass Journalism Professors Blog at 3:47 pm, December 4, 2008

    [...] The only criticism I’ve heard has come from a few bloggers and the new media guru Jay Rosen, who says the Times is pushing aside worthy requests from smaller innovators. (See here.) [...]

     
  6. Filling in the blanks on DocumentCloud · ulken.com at 11:52 am, January 28, 2009

    [...] OJR post on DocumentCloud, the much-buzzed-about $1-million Knight News Challenge grant proposal, is up. I did an e-mail interview with three of the [...]

     

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