NAB Teams With Knight Foundation on News Initiatives

The National Association of Broadcasters is looking for new projects that serve the information needs of local communities in a changing media consumption marketplace.

Armed with $200,000 from the Knight Foundation for broadcasting's PILOT initiative, NAB will be putting out the call for entries at the NAB Show in April.

Broadcasters, entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists and others will vet the entries.

“Broadcasters play an important role in helping to close the local news and information gap brought on by the digital disruption of journalism," said Jennifer Preston, Knight Foundation VP for journalism. "At the same time in order to stay relevant and better serve the information needs of local communities, broadcasters must evolve and innovate. With the National Association of Broadcasters’ leadership, we hope to uncover ideas to advance this goal, and create a stronger network of broadcast news innovators who care about local issues."

NAB will also take the opportunity to "build a network of broadcast news innovators and will provide guidance, support and industry exposure to winners of the challenge as they build and test prototypes."

Winners will be announced in the fall.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.