A partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Quick facts:

Goal: To advance citizenship and strengthen democratic society – by identifying and supporting news & knowledge innovations that better inform, connect, and engage people around the world.

Fellows: Since January, 2008, we have elected 25 News & Knowledge Fellows from 21 countries. Including those elected before the Knight partnership, there are nearly 100 Ashoka Fellows in the News & Knowledge community.

Collaboration: Ashoka Fellows work together to speed and scale social impact with projects ranging from media reform in Brazil to community radio in East Africa to a global forum on digital transparency solutions.

Intelligence: From the work of our growing universe of Fellows, Ashoka harvests and synthesizes unique intellectual capital that informs the future of the news & knowledge field.

The new media (dis)order:

Little more than a generation ago, you could find entire families sitting around the television, transfixed by Walter Cronkite. We all heard the same story at the same time. Now, here’s the new media tableau: Mom is on her laptop, streaming NPR. Dad catches up on the Drudge Report and a half-dozen other favorite blogs. Their teenaged son, glued to his mobile phone, gets and gives the latest via Twitter — and Sis is posting her mash-up of CNN reports on YouTube. And by the way, this family is as likely to be in Delhi or Sao Paulo as anywhere else.

Tectonic shifts in technology and user needs have changed forever the way news and knowledge is produced, delivered, and consumed, yielding dramatic social change and posing stark new challenges. The sheer number and diversity of information sources allows individuals to decide which are most relevant – but it also threatens both to overwhelm us with irrelevant data and to isolate us from one another. The explosion of new media has theoretically made the reins of information available to all, but often at the cost of accuracy, fairness, and privacy.

What’s permanent and true is the foundational connection between effective flows of information and effective citizenship. People who know what is happening around them, who fully understand the workings of government, the power of business, the challenges faced by society and the environment, and the resources at their disposal are equipped and empowered to make change. They become full information citizens.

The question is not how we preserve traditional media institutions, but how we invent new ones — anchored in a continuous stream of innovations that better connect people to information and to each other, that hold true to core journalistic values, and that, as Jack Knight mused 40 years ago, “rouse [people] to pursue their true interests.”

What we do

In dozens of countries, often in places with little technology infrastructure and/or weak traditions of free press, Ashoka’s News & Knowledge Fellows are building new models and strategies that promise to foster full information citizenship – and to change the face of the news and knowledge field.

• Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia is the modern, online successor to a 30-volume Encyclopedia Britannica — the collaborative product of hundreds of thousand of expert contributors and available to anyone, anywhere in the world with an Internet connection, free of cost.
• In Sri Lanka, one of the most hostile environments for press freedom, Sanjana Hattotuwa’s Groundviews website combines multiple media platforms with encryption technology to allow anyone to send and receive news without fear of government interference.
• Jocelyne Compaore’s laptop-wielding “synthesizers” record and distribute the news, stories, and opinions of farflung villagers in Burkina Faso, giving them an unaccustomed voice and creating a distinctive new rural news network.
• German Fellow Gregor Hackmack has created an online platform that not only exposes the votes and activities of politicians, but obliges them to answer questions from ordinary citizens. Nearly 95% of Parliament members participate.

We identify and support these changemakers through the nexus of two uniquely powerful networks. The first, comprised of hundreds of Ashoka staff, volunteers, and nominators in 70 countries, has been finding and connecting extraordinary entrepreneurs for over 30 years. Our partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight foundation adds the deep field expertise and experience of leading journalists and media experts around the world.

Like all Ashoka Fellows, News & Knowledge Fellows receive financial stipends that allow them to pursue their ideas full-time. More important, they join a community of over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs working for change in human rights, the environment, capital markets, and dozens of other fields. In collaborative activities, Fellows help each other enhance the impact of their work — and introduce even bigger ideas for future investment.

The result:

We are a global incubator for emerging innovators in the information realm. Our Fellows’ innovations preserve the values of the old media order while seizing on the opportunities presented by new technologies and rapidly changing information users. They seek to provide everyone with the information to act, the tools to engage, and the inspiration to participate in an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ world.