What’s cool about the newly announced Knight Foundation grant winners is what’s missing from the list. There are none of the Utopian and academic community projects that we’ve seen previous rounds of grant-making.
By deciding to fund interesting startups and open-source projects from commercial organizations, the foundation has taken a huge leap. The truth is that most of ideas we’ve seen from academics (and from monopoly incumbents) just seem irrelevant from the get-go.
Instead of a another round of well-meaning but soulless local sites, there are a number of projects whose results I can’t wait to see. I’m especially excited to see tool-makers like Adrian Holovaty and Richard Anderson each get about a million dollars to fund their projects. Better online journalism tools will benefit an untold number of communities in very real ways.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.