Howard University is one of the 2015-16 winners of the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. Its Truth Be Told project (formerly HU Insight)  is one of 11 projects from 13 U.S. universities that won a $35,000 Challenge Fund micro-grant to seed collaborative news experiments in living labs from a collaborative that includes the Online News Association, which administered the contest. The competitive Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education was created in 2014 to encourage journalism programs to experiment with new ways of providing news and information.

The fund is the brainchild of a collaborative that includes the Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation, and is managed by ONA, the world’s largest membership group of digital journalists.

The goal of the $1M Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education is to hack the journalism curriculum using customized versions of the teaching hospital model. The fund supports universities to partner with news organizations, and explore new ways of providing information to their local communities.

Winners receive up to $35,000 in micro-grants to support live, local news experiments. Winners can then compete to win up to $100,000 in additional grand prizes for best project and evaluation.

ONA has partnered with the Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation to launch this $1 million challenge over two years.

For more information contact ONA Deputy Director Irving Washington at [email protected].