Eight projects received a total of $2.4 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as winners of the 2012 Knight News Challenge‘s third and final round.
The previous rounds focused on networks and data. This time, the theme was mobile.
The Wikimedia Foundation won the biggest prize: $600,000 to make Wikipedia accessible to as many countries as possible with multiple languages and software that will make its content more available to “lower-end, more basic phones — the kinds the majority of people use to access data outside of the West,” according to the press release.
Most of the winners similarly involved bringing access to developing countries. The rest of them are: Abayima, Digital Democracy, rootIO, Textizen, TKOH, WeFarm, and WITNESS.
This year’s Knight News Challenge will have two rounds. The first, on tools for open government, will open next month.
Sara Morrison is a former assistant editor at CJR. Follow her on Twitter @saramorrison.