The MediaShift Idea Lab blog – a 36-strong group blog – has won a series of grants from US-based journalism foundation, the Knight Foundation.

Each year the foundation awards up to $5 million ‘to individuals who innovate community news using digital technology’, as part of its annual News Challenge competition.

Each member of the ‘lab’ won a grant to help fund a startup idea or blog on a topic related to reshaping community news.

The Idea Lab will then be used as a forum for the bloggers to share their experiences.

According to a press release from the foundation, projects which will feature on the lab include:

• The Playing the News project – a news simulation environment letting citizens play through a complex, evolving news story through interaction with the newsmakers;
• Seven academic ‘think tanks’ at US universities to evolve solutions to digital news problems;
• A scheme with MTV to put a ‘Knight Mobile Youth Journalist’ in every US state, who will create cideo news reports for distribution on mobile phones.