Knight News Challenge Proposal (December, 2009)
* Project Title:
Visions Unite, Boston
* Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$150,000
* Expected amount of time to complete project:
2 [years]
* Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$250,000
* Describe your project:
Visions Unite is a movement for people who want the news to matter. At first for the people most passionate about improving their communities, VU provides the means for more and more people to become involved as they see the potential to change their and others lives for the better. VU is a method for people who care to pool their resources in getting the word out about the topics they care about. It provides a fair process and a manageable level of incoming information through random sample voting on what news items are important enough to be promoted in a given cycle. This cycle would start off long, every month, but become more frequent as more people become involved. People and organizations who join propose and choose news through online tools– a web site with integration to mobile technology. The promotion of this news and information, however, would be done first and foremost offline and in person. All who participate in the selection and spread of the news are also able to suggest news items to the network. Organizations that may be at odds on some issues will be able to collaborate because both benefit from the greater reach of their ideas, and the process of choosing what is promoted is fair and transparent. People and organizations that have messages they want to get out now form a much larger communications network with the real possibility of reaching every person in a geographical area.
Existing dialog-promoting means of communication have time and attention limits to the number of participants, leaving one-to-many media as the dominant transmitter of news and information. VU combines equal access for all, democratic control of publishing, and collaborative delivery of content to produce a many-to-many communications network that scales.
* How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Visions Unite brings diverse groups and individuals that already strive to deliver news and information in their communities together for the potential of one hundred percent reach. The fair and transparent method for choosing news and information allows potential opponents to collaborate in delivering it. Mass involvement is both possible and encouraged in this system. People don’t just receive news about their local community and information about things that directly affects them, but actively choose news pieces that are most relevant and suggest what others should know about. Whether or not one’s ideas make the cut of being promoted by others in person, all adds to the knowledge on the website, and collaborators may be found.
* How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)
Visions Unite makes possible a collective discussion on the scale of an entire geographic community– a discussion in which all participants have a baseline knowledge and equal opportunity to speak. VU directly involves people in the real world, door to door. It leverages the passion of people who care about news and information as tools to make people’s lives better by enabling them to join forces to reach the maximum number of people in the community that they can possibly reach. VU involves more people as the chance to act on information to change lives makes more people care about news. The ability to vote about which piece of news is relevant, and at what scale, for a neighborhood or a region, makes VU a practical many-to-many media.
* What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
The people prepared to develop Visions Unite have a rich history of forming and leading organizations and together possess the passion for better journalism and the diverse skills and experiences needed to launch Visions Unite, Boston. Involved directors include a founder of the NewStandard which produced a daily hard news online paper for five years without advertising, corporation, or government funding, reporting the news from the standpoint of ordinary people, with every article including multiple perspectives and rigorous editing; a key organizer of support for reporting and journalism education initiatives in Mexico; an advocate for equal access to communication and a member of the Free Speech Radio News board of directors; a grassroots activist and law student; an innovator in social work services in St. Louis and Udaipur, India; a student and police officer; a founder of arts, cultural, and community resource organizations in New York City; and an accomplished marketing manager. Active volunteers include founders of youth organizations in New Hampshire and India, technologists, advocates for many causes, an athlete and inspirational speaker, and community leaders. Our technology volunteers involvement with open source free software, in particular the Drupal content management system, equips us to build the underlying technology for Visions Unite in an effective, reproducible, and scalable manner.
Home | Uniting Visions »
Leave a Comment