Electric Fishwrap

So you have a great idea about how to save the news industry but your editors aren’t listening? Or maybe your editors like the idea but there’s no manpower/money/upper management support?

With the Knight News Challenge there are no excuses. For those not in the know, the Knight Foundation is in its third year of funding innovative ideas in news reporting and delivery. This year the pot is $5 million. There are just three rules:

1. Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.
2. Serve the public interest.
3. Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

Not sure if your idea qualifies? Visit the Knight News Challenge Garage, where prospective applicants can talk about their ideas before they apply. Here are some applicants who have already applied.

My favorite past winner of Knight funds is Spot.us:

“Spot Us” is a project of the nonprofit Center for Media Change that allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists.

Other past winners here.

Hurry, that idea floating in your head has to be on paper by Nov. 1.

Who thinks a.m. cops calls, minor car accident or fire reports and routine meeting coverage are a waste of time? Who can think of a dozen other things they would rather do with that time?

Journalism is having a rough time with the transition to online content. As a result, Matt King argues that reporters are becoming less specialized and have less time to create quality content. King makes a compelling argument why we should cut back mundane tasks in newsrooms everywhere:

Overwork and unreasonable expectations = stenography. Stenography of some sorts (the sentencing of the principal child molester, the city council vote, etc.) is very important, but we need to stop doing so much of it. It’s important but it’s also about the easiest thing a reporter does, and there are people willing to do it for us for free.

King gives us a three-step program to cut the mundane work out of our day to give us more time to innovate and create (highly condensed, my emphasis):

1. It’s past time to understand 99 percent of car accidents, fires and arrests are the mundane details of life and people really don’t care, despite what page views say. In almost every instance these stories are cupcakes, eaten because they’re there, but wouldn’t be missed if they were not. Ever hear anyone crave a cupcake? This applies especially in non-competitive markets. …

It’s tantamount to flushing 10 hours of reporter time that could be spent talking to sources in cafes, or editing a cool video project, or writing a really strong narrative piece, or, in my case, playing with a spreadsheet.

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