PBS and the Knight Foundation are backing a group blog of "new media heavyweights" focused on community news as it shifts from print newspapers to the digital era. A significant chunk of change is being thrown into various projects by the Knight Foundation, including $5M for MIT to create a Center for Future Civic Media and $700K for an MTV community news project.

The Mediashift Idea Lab blog will be fed by the likes of Jay Rosen (NYU), J.D. Lasica and Ian Rowe (MTV), among others who received grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Here are a few of the Knight projects to be featured on the blog:

An MIT endeavor to create the "Center for Future Civic Media," designed to build stronger communities through innovation in digital media applied to journalism.

MTV will be putting a 'Knight Mobile Youth Journalist' in every state to create video news reports for
distribution on cell phones. Viewers will rate the videos and those with the highest ratings will be broadcast on MTV.

In New York, the Gotham Gazette will develop games to inform and engage players about key issues confronting New York City. The games report what solutions the players developed and relay those ideas to city officials.