The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the 2010 winners of the Knight News Challenge, a five-year Knight-funded initiative to support innovative digital news projects that use technology to inform specific geographic communities.

Now in its fourth year, the competition awarded a total of $2.74 million to twelve projects and organizations, with awards ranging from $74,000 to $400,000. Winning projects include CityTracking, which aims to make municipal data easy to understand; the Cartoonist, which engages readers in current news through cartoon-inspired online games; and Front Porch Forum, a community news site created to help people connect with members of their local community. One project, Tilemapping, was field-tested in Haiti to map where aid was needed after the January 12 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas.

Nearly half of this year's winners were private enterprises, up from 15 percent in 2009. To date, the foundation has supported fifty projects through the challenge, awarding a total of $23 million.

"The free flow of shared information is essential for communities to function in a democracy," said Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen. "Until someone figures out the next big thing 8212 the next killer app that might provide blockbuster connectivity and information sharing to masses of people — we can use the Knight News Challenge to...think in different ways about information sharing so we might discover the future of news."

To view a complete list of this year's Knight News Challenge winners, visit the Knight Foundation Web site.