This week, the Knight Foundation unveiled a new community information resource guide -- a collection of examples and tools to help you start a media project in your community.

This guide is intended for funders and organizations as well as community leaders and other individuals. It includes resources for:

• Assessing information needs
• Building partnerships
• Sustaining nonprofit news
• Leading communities
• Making grants
• Having impact
• Evaluating your work

Knight has also updated the Community Information Toolkit, to help discover how neighborhoods get their news, what types of information are lacking, and how communities can fill those gaps.

Since this toolkit debuted three years ago, Knight found that many of the organizations that used it customized its materials for to meet the needs of unique audiences. According to Knight, "Many cherry-picked just a few of the recommended steps. Some figured out how to implement the toolkit on a shoestring budget. And nearly all confirmed that the primary benefit of the experience was to bring people together to take these information issues on."

The updated toolkit now includes examples: mini case studies of organizations that have used the toolkit in different ways. "We included professionals from Puerto Rico to Montana, Arkansas and San Francisco. Not only will you see information about why people used the toolkit and what they learned, but also the actual materials generated by a handful of these organizations."