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Via Knight Digital Media Center:

The Knight Foundation’s 2010 Knight News Challenge rewards big ideas for informing and inspiring a geographic community. Deadline is Oct. 15. Learn more during Live Chats Sept. 9 and Oct. 8.

MIAMI - The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is accepting applications for the 2010 Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. The deadline for applications is Oct. 15.

Do you have a big idea for informing and inspiring a geographic community? Does it include innovative use of new digital tools or processes such as social media, mash-ups or wikis? How about new ways to exchange information via hand-held devices like cell phones? Knight Foundation wants to know. “You invent it. We fund it!” is the 2010 contest slogan.

Open to community-minded innovators worldwide, the contest has just three rules. Projects must use digital, open-source technology, distribute news in the public interest and be tested in a local community.

“We want entries to push the bounds of the imagination,” said Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation’s journalism program director. “But they don’t always have to involve the invention of something completely new. We’re also searching for innovative twists on familiar tools.”

This is the fourth year of the Knight News Challenge competition. So far, 300,000 people have visited the project web site, at newschallenge.org, a total of 7,000 people have entered and the foundation has picked 35 winners.

Read the full press release. For more on the News Challenge, visit http://www.NewsChallenge.org. For more on Knight Foundation’s Media Innovation Initiative, visit http://www.mediainnovation.org.