Berkman Projects Awarded Two Knight Foundation Grants

The Knight Foundation awarded its News Challenge grants in Miami yesterday, with two of the 24 awards going to Berkman Center projects!  Of the 1,650 applications received and the 24 grants awarded, the Berkman Center was the only organization to receive multiple grants.

Global Voices Online was awarded $244,000 over two years to expand the reach of the project by highlighting underrepresented voices around the world.  The effort, known as Rising Voices, will introduce thousands of new developing world bloggers to the world, helping students, journalists, activists and people from rural areas to the blogosphere.

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) was awarded $250,000 over one year to create a legal resource for citizen journalists to help protect the legal rights of those engaged in speech on the internet, and to build a community of lawyers, academics, journalists, and others who are interested in facilitating citizen participation in online media.

Berkman Fellow and CMLP Project Director David Ardia has posted a blog on the project's new website announcing the award and Berkman Fellow and Global Voices Co-Founder Ethan Zuckerman explains in his blog the intent of Global Voices and checks out some of the other News Challenge winners.

The full press release is available in the Berkman Newsroom and check out the Boston Globe's coverage of area recipients, where they note that, "New England winners (took) home over half the grant money."