Open government projects highlighted in this year's Knight Info Challenge winners

Today the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the 10 local information projects that have won the 2013 Knight Community Information Challenge. This year, for the first time, KCIC gave priority to open government projects, aimed at improving the interaction between people and their governments.

Indie community news publishers meet in Chicago, Oct. 3-5

Even when the day-to-day tactics of survival are a challenge, it helps to focus on the strategy of thriving. In just three weeks, publishers of independent community news sites from around the U.S. will gather in Chicago for the LION Summit: Innovation for Digital Media Entrepreneurs -- where they will share lessons and ideas for both surviving and thriving in a fast-shifting media landscape.

Dylan Smith, chairman of the Local Independent Online News Publishers Association (and editor of the Tucson Sentinel), shared some highlights of the upcoming conference.

FOIA Machine: What comes after Kickstarter success

Combining funding with community can lead to great things. Recently a project to build a useful open government tool -- which gained initial support through a Knight prototype grant -- completed a highly successful crowdfunding campaign. This will allow the Center for Investigative Reporting to expand "FOIA Machine" into public availability, with features that will be useful to any journalist or news/information effort.

Lessons from New Media Women Entrepreneurs

What do women bring to the community media table? Since 2008, J-Lab's New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative has funded 22 women-led media startup projects, several of them focused on community needs. On Sept. 12, the Women Media Entrepreneurs Summit in Washington D.C. will gather the lessons from this program. J-Lab director Jan Schaffer recently reflected on this experience.

Hack the Hood: Boosting local business, youth in Oakland

Community engagement can take many forms -- and sometimes a single program can address several important community-building goals. A new summer program in Oakland, Calif. is helping small businesses there gain online visibility, while also helping local youths gain professional and tech skills.

While OaklandLocal began in 2009 as a nonprofit community news/views site, its mission has since expanded into many types of local capacity building. Their latest venture, Hack the Hood, attempts to directly address Oakland's economic and youth employment challenges.

Building your local tech network: Aug 7 KDMC webinar

As digital media and mobile tools become crucial for almost any community engagement effort, you'll need tech allies in your corner. Fortunately you have lots of options to foster valuable relationships with your local tech community. In an upcoming KDMC webinar, Lisa Williams will explain how to make and grow these connections. Here's a sneak peak of her advice...

Facebook Graph Search: New local insight, connections, privacy concerns

This week Facebook rolled out its controversial Graph Search feature to most of its U.S. users. It can be a useful way to find sources and stories related to your community, and gain insight to help you land advertisers and funders. And yes, it can be a little creepy too.

Delving into data for great local economic stories

The economy remains a hot topic in many communities, and these stories always come down to numbers. Fortunately there is a great deal of federal, state, and county-level economic data available from a variety of online sources. At this month's Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, a special workshop showed reporters how to discover interesting local stories in economic data -- or use this data to add valuable context to other community coverage.

Beacon, St. Louis Public Radio assess role for merged mission-based newsroom

St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon hope to create a new mission-based newsroom with the ambitious goal of providing issue–oriented, daily news specifically tailored to the strategic needs of the region — and delivering it through merged radio and digital platforms.

Vojo mobile community media platform launches this week

Want to bridge the digital divide in your community? While many community news and information sites allow community members to post their own content, few make this easy to do via mobile devices, let alone non-smart "feature" phones. This weekend, the creators of a noted Hispanic community site will launch a hosted version of their content platform that you can post to from any phone -- even a landline.